Friday, April 29, 2011

2 posts in as many days. This won't happen again.

I stopped paying much attention to American news sources a long time ago. Too much obsession with celebrity gossip (I refuse to call any of it news) and sports. BBC news is my homepage on the internet and I really only look at anything else if I'm looking for something specific or more facts. Today, however they are completely obsessed with the Royal Wedding. This is obviously completely understandable. I don't care about the wedding (though that dress was gorgeous) but I understand them covering it the way they did. The problem is that it's making me miss London very badly to see it plastered all over every time I open a new browser window.

I spent a semester there for school in 2004. Life has kept getting in the way and I haven't been able to go back since then. Sometimes the missing it is worse than others. I grew up a small town girl (there were 1800 kids in the entire K-12 district I attended) but I love the big city.  I've always been very much a home is where your family is sort of person, but if I was forced to pick on physical location to call home, it would be London (though not, perhaps, the exact place we stayed).
I love this picture, despite the blurriness.
There was a whole group of us from Ball State that went, and we lived in a wing of a hostel that had been set up as a dormitory for us. It changed ownership while I was there, and has apparently been closed for renovations over since. Either it's never going to reopen or they've gutted the entire thing. It wasn't a bad place, but it wasn't great either. We were, however, just a few short blocks from Hyde Park.
This the Google satellite view of our neighborhood. The red dot is the intersection we lived at. Number 1 Queen's Gardens. School was past Paddington, just off Edgware Road* and the touristy stuff was on the other end of the park. The mall, Whitely's, became more interesting later when I learned it had originally been one of the first department stores.


I hope to be able to go back before we have kids. Dustin has never been, and I'd love to be able to show it to him without having to worry about having wee ones be able to keep up. Had his boss's corporate contract not run out and so vastly changed our financial situation, we probably would go this summer.

This was actually not taken in London. It's York, actually. But it is the people I spent the most time with. Stephanie, my two roommates Sarah and Mandy, Debbie, Me, Jenny, and Kari. Debbie's the only one I still keep in contact with. Last I heard, Stephanie was married to one of the guys who went (they started dating there) and Kari was living in Germany teaching on a military base. I don't know about the others. I miss it. I miss them.




*Terrorism takes on a different face when they hit somewhere you know. I was through that station on a very regular basis.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

If April showers bring Mayflowers...

Then we're going to have quite a lot of flowers. It seems like it's been raining constantly these past few days. However, given the fact that Carmel insists on setting off their storm sirens any time that Hamilton County has a severe thunderstorm warning, I'm getting quite tired of hearing them.




Quarter Goals

Quarter 1: make a sweater for myself and three pairs of socks. The sweater is done, the socks are not. And I've decided (I think the whole group has done the same) that it's going to be 12 socks, rather than 12 pairs.  I quite like it; this picture does not do it justice. I've also been losing weight, which makes it even better.






Quarter 2: I need to catch up on my socks and enter something in the state fair. If I can find a quality place to get a print made (I need to get on that) I'll be entering that picture I showed a few weeks ago. I am also planning on making a lace shawl for it; it's at one half of it's needed diameter, but being that it's a circle, that doesn't mean that I'm anywhere near halfway done with it. 


The pattern is the Circular Shell Shawl (that's really hard to say, try it) from the book Crochet Lace. Thankfully the library had it, or I never would have been able to make any of the patterns. The book is out of print and is well over $100 on Amazon. I'm using some black (yes, black lace, I am that crazy) Classic Elite Silky Alpaca Lace that I had in my stash. It's a 70/30 alpaca/silk blend and it is amazing. 
There aren't really any good pictures on the Ravelry page for this. This one by Shepardscrook is the best there is, but she did modify the border a bit.
For the non-yarnies reading this, this is what size yarn we're dealing with when we say "lace weight." It's tiny, and it can be a pain the a** to work with. 







Aside from that, there's not been a lot going on. Today is the last day of classes, finals next week, then off until mid-August. I am hoping that I'll be able to switch to basically full-time at work. I also plan on doing some major cleaning of the house. We're both horrible packrats and we have closets full of stuff that we likely don't need. We've also decided that we're likely going to be in our current place until I graduate, which will be in 2013 and now that we've officially decided that this isn't just a temporary place, I'd really like to paint. I am so tired of cream colored walls.




















































































































































Friday, April 22, 2011

I was recently reminded that I haven't blogged in a very long time. I am very busy, and very overwhelmed with school right now. One week of classes left, and then it's finals. I have a huge portfolio due on Tuesday, and then several final projects as well as the tests themselves. I foresee a very late night tomorrow on the portfolio. Once all that is done (or at least the portfolio part) I shall write a proper post.

For now, though, I  finished my Quarter One goal for group with a couple of days left and have started the Quarter Two project. I'll post pictures of both when I get a chance for a proper update.